rent4country
BANNED
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2020
- Messages
- 1,638
- Reaction score
- -12
- Country
- Location
Space Force launches billion-dollar satellite to warn of missile launches
The fifth Lockheed Martin-built SBIRS satellite joins a globe-spanning constellation
www.cbsnews.com
A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday, boosting a billion-dollar missile early warning satellite into orbit to scan the Earth below for the tell-tale heat generated by a threatening rocket launch.
Once operational, after tests and checkout, the new satellite will join four other Space Based Infrared System — SBIRS — spacecraft already in orbit 22,300 miles above the equator that use telescopes and state-of-the-art infrared sensors to provide early warning of unusual heat "signatures."
"The need for SBIRS systems has never been more critical," said Tom McCormick, vice president of satellite-builder Lockheed Martin's Overhead Persistent Infrared Missions division. "The threat of ballistic missile technology is spreading around the world, adversaries who we once held at geographic arm's length now tout their development of this technology.
"For early missile warning, SBIRS infrared detection capabilities serve as a tip of the spear, or bell ringer, that a launch has occurred and something is coming. SBIRS data informs many of our country's other defensive systems, which together form a protective missile kill chain to defend our nation and our armed forces."
Running a day late because of trouble with a launch pad system, the SBIRS GEO-5 mission got underway at 1:37 p.m. EDT when the Atlas 5's Russian-built RD-180 main engine ignited, followed by two strap-on solid-fuel boosters.
The 197-foot-tall rocket, tipping the scales at 950,000 pounds at liftoff, majestically climbed away from pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station atop a plume of brilliant exhaust, tipping over and arcing to the east over the Atlantic Ocean through a cloudless blue sky.
